Physicists are very excited, because the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves has just been announced! The signal matches the prediction for two black holes colliding. This will likely mean a Nobel Prize for someone. This is a tremendous scientific achievement, representing a vast global collaboration between scientists, advanced technology, government funding, and simple good luck.

The signal lasted for just 1/5 of a second, but scientists have extracted an impressive amount of information from it. This video plays the “chirp” which was detected, converting the gravitational wave signal to sound so you can hear it. The video repeats the chirp 8 times, half of those scaled to a higher frequency where human hearing is more sensitive.

The signal was picked up by the two “LIGO” detectors in the United States. These have two 4km long pipes at right angles, housing laser light which measures the miniscule expansion and contraction of space caused by a passing gravitational wave. This is the Hanford, Washington instrument; the other is in Livingston, Louisiana.

But understand that calling it “sound” is metaphorical, for instance when someone gave a demonstration by playing a cello on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV. A gravitational wave is a ripple through the “fabric” of space itself and travels at the speed of light, whereas a sound wave transmits via air molecules bumping together and travels a million times more slowly. It should also be clarified that the gravitational waves would have been emitted for a far longer period than 0.2 seconds, it’s just they were too weak to be detected by us.

Gravitational waves are a consequence of general relativity, and were first predicted by Einstein in 1916. Though not an area of my research so far, I have looked in-depth at the measurement of distances in relativity, which is somewhat related. I look forward to learning and sharing more.